


that unnoticed (that necessary)

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alcohol, Blood, M/M, daniel kenneth jacobi is a public health hazard, jacobi is a pining asshat and pays for his transgressions immediately and with interest, just starting you right off with the fun tags, kepler does a terrible impression of a bona-fide human being
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 11:59:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11252712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: you anticipate him like a forest survives a wildfire—consolidating the damage and impatient to start again once the very last of you has burnt down.(jacobi entertains a guest he hadn't planned on expecting.)





	that unnoticed (that necessary)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fab_ia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fab_ia/gifts).



> all i had in my head the entire time i wrote this was that click-burn sound a lighter makes when you flick it
> 
> title is from margaret atwood's poem, ["variation on the word sleep"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/variation-word-sleep), specifically "i would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. i would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary."

you sit faced with the greatest dilemma you think you’ve ever encountered.

the bottle of liquor is three feet to your left. the remote is two feet to your right. you won’t be able to reach either of them without falling right the fuck over and probably cracking your head open on the hardwood, and so now you’re tasked with deciding which one is worth the considerable risk to your personal health and safety.

on the one hand, liquor—without a doubt the best liquor you’ve never been able to afford, and, right up until it started to taste like gunpowder and blood _(and all the words you haven’t got the guts to say, that clutch at your throat in a white-knuckled grip until you’re practically gagging on them)_ about halfway through the bottle, it’s certainly the best liquor you’ve ever _had,_ but—

but on the other hand, literally, the remote is the only thing that’s going to turn off netflix’s judging, dark-eyed stare, the _are you still watching [cutthroat kitchen]?_ like a fucking accusation—and okay, maybe you’re reading too much into it, and maybe maxwell is rubbing off on you that you’re projecting your insecurities on the household appliances, and maybe it’s because you’ve watched, like, sixty episodes nonstop since your long weekend started, and maybe, just maybe, it’s because you’re sitting in your sweats watching cooking shows surrounded by the shitty detritus of your last supper, and _maybe_ all that’s happened to be is what was left of a bottle of red alana brought over last week and a lonely remnant of a shitty six-pack and of course half a bottle of whiskey because you, daniel jacobi, are fucking—

you are _wasted,_ plastered, slam-dunk drunk like you haven't been since you still saw starbursts behind your eyelids every time you closed them, since every shadow in the sky was a mushroom cloud with your name on it. there was a reason, you’re sure, for why you got home and reached for the bottles first, something you needed to drown or steep or stow away in the low-down hidden parts of you, but you’re fucked to remember what it was now. the whiskey curls through your limbs and plays nice with your nervous system, smooths your jackrabbit heartbeat until it doesn’t quite feel like a pair of hands against your throat anymore.

netflix gives up on you, finally, turns off the screen with a snap of white noise and you hadn’t realized how _quiet_ your apartment was without the thrum of the tv running underneath everything else. your hands shake when you look at them and it’s too much, suddenly, the oppressive silence of your living room and the wide dark yawn of the tv’s screen—if you didn’t know any better it would seem like it’s looming over you, a grin that’s all abyss and no teeth, just a straight swallow—you jerk upright and the room tilts with you, rippling out along the edges like that 3D sine-wave simulation alana had mooned over last week, all hard light and gleaming hologram, that you’d hadn’t paid much attention to aside from how the glow of it reflected across her eyes like a thermite explosion, the quickfire spark and lingering glow. the couch roils under you when you dig your fingers into the seat and try to lever yourself up, which would be hilarious if the fucking thing wasn’t _stationary,_ and you almost overcorrect anyway. it’s a near thing, but you don’t crack your head open on the floor and call it a victory.

you waaaaaaalk to your bedroom, a prolonged lurch that's all wobbly knees and elbows knocked against walls and doorways. you land flat and bounce just enough for your brain to rattle sickeningly in your skull and you tilt your face to the side just enough to breathe and _then,_ you are asleep.

 

it's the smell that wakes you. and the fact that you are somehow _more_ drunk and _more_ groggy than when you fell asleep and that the bed tilts and rolls under you, but mostly it's the smell. like iron and char and a hospital room, which is a bizarre enough combination that you lift your head from the pillow and regret it instantly. it makes your head pound worse and your mouth is gross and dry and what the _fuck,_ honestly, could that be? it’s all you can do to roll over and you spend longer than you’d care to admit with one hand on your knee and the other pinching the bridge of your nose, sucking in deep breaths. it only makes the smell worse, stronger.

you get up, st-stumble to the—fuck, the thing with the legs and, _shit,_ and the wood—the _dresser,_ yeah, the thing with the clothes and your daddy's old dog tags, you st-stumble to the dresser and brace your gross, clammy hand on the sharp corner for a brief jolt of pain, of clarity before it fades into haze again. it’s a game of leapfrog to get to the bedroom door, mostly you bouncing off every piece of goddamn furniture like a human pinball, and you’re a mess of stubbed toes and busted shins by the time you fling yourself across the threshold and barely catch yourself against the far wall of the corridor and—

and there’s _someone in your house._

you fumble at the waistband of your sweats for a good ten seconds before you realize your gun is in your bedroom somewhere, or shoved between the couch cushions, or in your go-bag, or fuck, honestly, probably on the kitchen counter. it’s probably a blessing, anyway, since your vision swims just enough that you’re more likely to hurt yourself than whoever decided to come ruin your fucking night—if you die it’s your own goddamn fault, which is to say that when your dinner was the remnants of a bottle of red wine, a can of beer, and half a bottle of whiskey, you don't always remember whether or not you've locked your front door.

but then, across the yawning absence of tv static, you hear, “Son and heir of a mongrel _bitch,”_ and that’s—that’s _shakespeare?_ no, well, _yes,_ it is shakespeare but more importantly, _most_ importantly that means it’s—

you entertain wondering how the hell he got your key for one whole second before you realize that _of course_ he has your key. you can't remember if you gave it to him, or if he's always just had it, but it’s not like it’s ever come up, not like he’s ever just waltzed into your shithole apartment as he pleased and, _fuck,_ did you have a _job?_ you’re not sure how long you’ve been asleep and it could damn well be monday already, and he’s here to skin you alive and use your teeth as whiskey stones and god, you would deserve it, you would _let him—_

you make it to the end of the hallway before your balance overcorrects, literally trips you into your own waking nightmare, and when you see Kepler bleeding out on your couch with half your med kit strewn all around, you promptly lean over and throw your guts up all over the living room floor.

“Nothing in your medicine cabinet is labeled,” Kepler says instead of hello while you wipe your mouth on the back of your hand and wonder if between the acid in your gut and in the booze, the hardwood will stain—you want your fucking deposit back eventually, fuck's sake, “I expect better from you, Mr. Jacobi.”

you expect a lot of things, too, which is honestly stupid, demanding any kind of guarantee with your quicksilver job and your tire-fire life, but at the very least you had thought you could stew in your inequities in the comfort of your home without your boss barging in on you in the middle of the goddamn—

you glance outside, and both the sparkling stars and Kepler's twisted, disappointed scowl tell you that it's not yet day. there’s just enough starlight that filters through the light pollution and the half-drawn blinds to throw his face in sharp relief—his face, yeah, and the growing patch of blood that crawls up Kepler’s shirt and oozes from between his fingers where his hand is jammed against his stomach. his face is terribly pale and you can’t help but stare at the column of his throat when he tilts his head back against the armrest and sucks a shuddering breath in through his teeth.

you're fucked. you're fuckity fucking fucked but now, at least, you're suddenly, stunningly sober.

“oh shit,” you say, “oh fuck, sir, fuck. _fuck—”_

Kepler bites out a laugh between gritted teeth. “Eloquently put.”

“shut the fuck up,” you snap, tasting bile creep back up your throat as you come around the back of the couch and see the full extent of the damage—to your medicine kit, to your couch, to him. “sir,” you add when Kepler's hand tightens fractionally on the couch cushion and you're that far gone, you sad little fuck, that his every twitch is such gospel to you.

it’s bad, so bad, the air reeks with it and the blood won’t stop, spreads in rivulets across Kepler’s skin where his grip has ridden up his shirt to seep into the couch cushions beneath him. your hands are still shaking and the smell is in your throat now, overwhelming and choking and you don’t know where to start. the three whole things you know about first aid _(put out the fire, stop the bleeding, don’t die)_ flee in the face of the goddamn murder mystery playing out on your ratty-ass sofa.

“you know,” you start, hear the crackle of hysterics in your voice and wince but keep going, “you know who labels their medicine cabinets? _hospitals,”_ and the look Kepler levels at you is enough to shut you right the fuck up before you can really start in on dissolving into a blubbering mess.

“You were closer,” he tells you like it pains him to admit it, and god it’s pathetic, the curl of pride that twists low in your gut. “Had a job down the street. Didn’t work out.”

_no shit,_ you don’t say.

you drop to your knees in front of him instead and his free hand splays across your neck, thumb resting on the hollow of your throat and one finger pressed against your pulse. his hands are tacky and slick with blood, smearing it across your collarbone and down your bare chest and you realize you're holding your goddamn breath. “Jacobi,” he says, like the fucking voice of god, “Daniel. I need you to focus.”

you can do that. you can do anything for him, anything he asks of you and one hundred and forty-seven more things he doesn't, you know, you've counted them in the dark, staring at the ceiling and ticking off each one—you inhale, shaky, feel his hand dip and rise with it. “i can do that.”

Kepler looks like he doesn’t quite believe you. you don’t blame him.

“Mr. Jacobi,” he says eventually, low and quiet, “Do you remember Israel?”

you pause, stare intently at Kepler’s shoulder while you try, in fact, to remember. finally, “tel aviv or yafo?” the two cities are just over a mile and a half apart, but they’re vastly different stories. you take a bullet to the arm in one. Kepler slits a man’s throat with a piece of shattered windowpane in the other.

they’re both terribly romantic, you think.

“Tel Aviv.” Kepler grimaces but doesn’t say anything else and even though you’re still sixty percent liquor you know this routine, know that Kepler only starts his long-winded bullshit when he’s got a point, got a _lesson_ he needs to hammer through your concrete skull and you can feel the scar on your bicep like a live wire while the gears grumble and clunk together—it was a sniper, you remember, caught you on the way out of the building down an alley you’d thought you’d cleared, a firecracker burst of pain that lanced up your shoulder and across your jaw, the splatter of blood that caught you and Kepler in the spray when the bullet tore clean through muscle and—

oh. _oh._

he moans low in his throat when you pry his hand away and peel back his shirt, take the smallest bit of pleasure in pulling so hard the buttons come right off and scatter across the floor and you’re drooling a little, probably, when you run your hands down his chest and stomach and around the back of his ribs to find exactly what you’re looking for—an exit wound, clean through muscle and not viscera. the blood isn’t nearly as bad as it’d looked either, an ooze instead of a flood, smeared warm all over your hands. Warren Kepler is not dying on your fucking couch and you sag with the relief that bolts down your spine.

it's a fine line, you think, between fucking up and _failing,_ between getting his attention and facing his wrath, which sometimes feels like exactly the same thing and you love it, _drown_ in it; you crave them both in equal measure. but tonight, tonight you did good, daniel, you can see it in the glint of teeth in his smile, in the way he chuckles when your fingers fumble on the wrapper of the gauze pad. you’d be lying if you said you didn’t watch the ripple of muscle under his skin when you pop the whole top off the bottle of rubbing alcohol in your hurry and just dump it all over, if you said you didn’t love the way his fingers dig into your arm hard enough to bruise when he braces against the searing burn. you pack the wound with what looks like the entirety of your medicine kit, moving under his careful, murmured instruction—he is remarkably calm for someone who should be going into shock, his eyes sharp and focused and his hand a steady, bracing grip. but that’s not news; you’ve spent two years treading water in the wine-dark sea that yawns between Warren Kepler and the rest of humanity, watched the ripple of _monster_ shift and glide under his skin. you get a glimpse of spine and claw curving out of the water every once in a while, just long enough for you to taste salt and feel like drowning.

_how glad i am you've fallen for my clever ruse,_ you see when he flirts with the waitress while his feet tangle with yours under the table, when he squeezes the doctor’s hand while you watch him reach into his jacket pocket for the gun, _my facsimile of humanity, how lifelike is this skin, these eyes, this smile, i picked them out myself—_

“Jacobi,” he says and you flinch, yank your hands back from the mess of gauze and tape and padding that is Kepler’s stomach, jerk your head up to meet his eyes so fast that your vision lags and the world spins. his grip on your arm flexes and you suck in air like his hand is at your throat instead, choke down a groan when the room tilts into focus because he’s looking at you, _through you,_ down to your marrow and guts and aching, hungry want. you’re a hell of a lot closer than you were when you first stumbled over and this close Kepler's breath smells like stale cigarette smoke and he _doesn't—_ doesn’t smoke, that is, finds it _boring_ he tells you once, a pointless exercise in addiction that he doesn’t have time for. you’ve never seen him do it, not even for a mission, but the harder you look the more you find there are a _lot_ of things you’ve never seen Kepler do and, oh god—

there's a hickey on his neck and you reach for it before you can stop yourself, press your thumb against it just to watch him hiss—the bullet wound in his fucking gut doesn't seem to bother him much but this, this hickey that you realize is the start of a _trail_ that creeps down under his shirt collar, this is what makes him flinch. your fingers catch the light and they’re _so red,_ sticky and glinting like candy glaze and you can’t help it, you run them up Kepler’s throat, his jaw, drag your thumb across his cheekbone just to watch it smear. you’re drunk and he’s in shock and there’s nothing about this that even smacks of _okay,_ of something you’re not going to regret in the early hours of tomorrow, in a week _(let’s be honest, there’s no way you’ll regret this, no way you won’t tuck this away in the deepest, loneliest parts of you to rhapsodize over when the flash-burn of Kepler’s eyes on your skin won’t be enough, like it’s ever been enough)._

“Did you need something, Mr. Jacobi?” he croons, so close he might as well already be kissing you, and you? you've never been good at restraint, never saw something you had to have and stopped before you could pry it open and see how it ticked, what color the flames turned when you lit the match and now—now you want to know what sound he’ll make when you bite his lip, how bone-deep it’ll hurt when your teeth clack together with the force of it and you tilt forward and he doesn’t stop you—

it tastes like gasoline and the inside of a dying star, and how fucking tragic can you be, how low can you sink and crawl that this is all you need to feel _alive—_

you gasp into his mouth and he slides fingers through your hair, sticky and catching but you rise up on your knees to curl over him anyway. your mouth probably tastes like vomit and a lifetime of regrets but his tastes like tequila and you chase it across his tongue and smile when the hand in your hair grips tighter. it’s becoming terrifically clear _exactly_ what sort of mission Kepler had been on and your hands slide down to his shoulders, dig your nails in like you can claw inside of him, slot beneath his ribcage like another organ, like a perfect fit. one of his hands slips from your hair to fist into the waistband of your sweats and yank you up, over, so you’re straddling him on the couch, crouched over him and covered in blood and his eyes are dark, pupils blown when you pull back to suck in one shuddering breath after another. you can only imagine what you look like, a feral, straggling thing, but when you lean down to bite back into his mouth he lets you, groans and pulls you flush to him. your knees bracket his waist and you dig in, vindictive, vicious, tighten your grip and he responds by jerking your head to the side to mouth at your neck, to bite a hopscotch path of bruises across your skin to match his.

it’s exactly as violent as you’d hoped it would be—he’s cruel with his teeth when he sinks them into your collarbone, gives you a matching mark on the other side when your hands flutter down to his stomach to make sure your extracurriculars aren’t going to end with him literally spilling his guts all over your couch and you press too hard in your haste, but you shake apart when he follows it with a kiss, softer than anything you’ve ever come to expect from him. the bones in his hands grind against your hips but the way he kisses you again is almost kind, the way you can nearly taste his smile when he worries your bottom lip between his teeth. “Daniel,” he murmurs as he reaches up to card his fingers through your hair, brushes it away from your sweat-slicked forehead. “Daniel.”  he sounds amused, sounds _fond,_ and you can’t—can’t handle this, his pantomime of affection. you rake your nails down his chest and drop your head to his shoulder and wait for the press of fingers against your ribs, the _pop-crunch_ of your sternum giving way as Kepler finally rips the beating heart out of you and you let him, welcome him in like he’s coming home—  

you tremble to a stop like that eventually, your face pressed into the crook of his neck and his hands on your hips, bent over him like supplication, like a bloody altar. he taps an idle rhythm against the curve of your hip and it feels almost like a heartbeat. the blood is drying now, cracking and flaking and sticking you two together where your skin meets: your hands on his neck, his fingers digging into your hips, your chests—yours heaving and his a steady counterpoint. the bandages on his stomach poke and itch against your skin and you fidget but don't move away, press yourself closer until Kepler skims his hands up your sides and wraps them around your waist, fingers spread against your spine. his breathing is slowing, the rise of his chest fading against yours and you panic for one terrifying, frantic moment before you realize he's just falling asleep.

it's—it's _endearing,_ sort of, watching the planes of his face smooth out in the dim light from outside. this close you can see the subtle twist of his neck as he settles against the armrest, the way the streak of his own blood fractures across his cheekbone, the way he doesn’t look away from you until his eyes shutter closed. there’s a sheen of sweat on both of you and you’re crusted in gore and your pants and your couch and your fucking life are _ruined_ , but—but Kepler’s fingers still twitch idly against your spine, tapping a tune against your vertebrae that only he can dance to, and there’s a bloody outline of your lips pressed right over his backhanded, treacherous monster heart, and your knees bracket his waist now like a life jacket, or a block of cement—

there’s a very real chance he’ll shove you off the second he’s conscious again. a very real chance he’ll say, “Thank you, Mr. Jacobi,” or “See you on Monday, Mr. Jacobi,” and leave you in the wreckage of your apartment, of your life.

you decide that there are worse things to wake up to, and then you are, again, asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been writing overly-stylized second person bullshit for many a year, but the deepest of thanks go to sciencematter, whose work has impressed upon me the true caliber that second person writing can really attain.


End file.
